The Honeymoon's Over

Piper and Leo have been away for a month seeing the elders, leaving Prue and Phoebe without The Power of Three. While the sisters are trying to get along with each other and manage their everyday life Piper and Leo are back quarreling so they don't even greet the sisters. Piper freezes Leo and goes to P3 telling her sisters not to let Leo know where she is. There Prue finds out that Piper thought she was away for a day only. The only problem is that she can't really remember what she saw during this day up there. Soon they have to deal with 'Guardians,' demons who help mortal murderers go free in exchange for the souls of their victims. After vanquishing the first guardian all three get acquainted with a very handsome and charming DA, Cole Turner (Julian McMahon), who wants to imprison the murderer and needs the sister's testimony at the court in order to do so. While he is doing his best to prove the accused was obviously the murderer, the judge says he has not enough evidence and releases the murderer. After his failure Cole turns to Phoebe for help, to prove the murderer was guilty. The short conversation between the two proves they are attracted to each other. Before leaving Cole sticks his visit card between the pages of the book Phoebe is holding and asks her to call him if she thinks she can help. After he's gone Phoebe takes the card out and has a premonition about Cole being killed by the Guardian somewhere in a parking lot. Meanwhile Cole is at the police station talking to Darryl. Phoebe calls him to warn, but the connection is interrupted and all Phoebe catches is that Cole is going to leave the police station right away. Back at the parking lot of the police station Cole is walking towards his car when he feels someone following him. At first he takes no notice of it, but becomes suspicious. The Guardian approaches him from behind his back and knocks him out, but when he tries to kill him the sisters show up and vanquish him. Phoebe learns she has an active power at last; levitation. Cole visits the murderer before the trial and tells him to warn whoever has sent him for Cole that he will get him even if he loses the case. The sisters are called again to give testimony, but this time they have figured out somebody (and most probably the judge himself) at the courtroom must be a demon to let so many criminals loose and while Cole is speaking Piper freezes all the innocents in the courtroom. Awkwardly only Leo, Darryl and Cole freeze and the sisters have to fight the demon-judge and the Guardians. After losing the fight to the Charmed ones the judge collects his Guardians and heads to his office. It is then that we see Cole was pretending to be frozen. He shimmers into the judge's office to his greatest surprise and vanquishes him with a slight movement of his hand (like a punishment for trying to kill him), then he shimmers back to the courtroom and pretends to be frozen again. The sisters can see that the judge was vanquished, but don't want to get deep into details and return to unfreeze everybody. In order to hide their secret from Cole Phoebe knocks him unconscious and when he is awake claims to have saved him again. Phoebe realizes that Cole has become her new love interest without suspecting what he is hiding.